BloodSweatTears
by whimsycality
Summary: The Losers and the things, tangible and intangible, that define them. Movie verse, not fluffy.
1. Circles

**Title:** BloodSweatTears

**Disclaimer:** I own absolutely nothing, all characters and original Losers verse settings belong to other very lucky people.

**Pairings/Couples/Category:** Losers(movie verse), all of the characters, references Clay/Aisha, Pooch/Jolene, and if you squint, Cougar/Jensen.

**Rating:** Mature

**Warnings:** There will be references to death, sex (consensual and nonconsensual), violence, and the use of adult language. Not fluffy.

**Summary:** The Losers and the things, tangible and intangible, that define them.

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><p><em><strong>Circles<strong>_

Circles don't have a beginning and they don't have an ending. They're closed, contained, secretive. They don't have sharp edges. But, like the rings in a tree, they can tell a story. The circles on her arm tell the story of daddy's little princess, of mama's sweet angel, of a warrior woman jaded by the real world who puts ink in her skin to get the memories out of her head. There are three, three for the moments that changed her life.

The thickest and first is for the day her mother died, killed by a competitor of her father's who wanted to send a message. It's also for the day she first realized that her father was a bad man, that daddy's little princess was the heir to a drug king, and that a river of blood lay beneath the perfect trappings of her life.

The second is for her first kill. An employee of her father's sampled a little too much of the product and decided that fucking the bosses fifteen-year-old daughter, whether she wanted to or not, was a brilliant idea. Mama's always precocious and not-so-sweet angel gutted him like a pig and left him in the courtyard for all the other employees to see. Daddy sent her to school in America after that, but it was too late – she can still see the blood under her fingernails sometimes, and hear daddy's little princess screaming in the back of her head.

The third circle is for her father, not a good man, but _hers_, and he's dead and she swore vengeance and now she's fucking the man that killed him and she's not sure there's a circle big enough to take away the sharp edges of that truth.

She knows she'll have to add a fourth and final circle one day, for Clay. It will be for the day she kills him, more blood on her skin and stains on her soul. Or it will be for the day she admits that she's never going to, and finally lets daddy's princess and mama's angel go for good.

Either way, she thinks the circle will be red.


	2. Tall Tales

**A/N:** The Losers have set up shop in my psyche and won't go away. Literally. I tried to go to bed three times last night and woke up with first Roque, then Jensen, then Clay, talkingtalkingtalking until I wrote down their vignettes. Cougar and Pooch are being sneakier, but I'm sure that will only last until I try to sleep tonight...

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><p><em><strong>Tall Tales<strong>_

When people ask about the scar on Roque's face, he has a hundred different stories to tell them – epic sagas of daring and bravery, brushes with death, and drunken escapades that beat any Hollywood blockbuster.

There's the time his first unit was ambushed by Afghani guerrillas and he let the leader slice his face open just so he'd get close enough for Roque to stick his own knife into the bastard's guts.

Or the weeks he spent imprisoned and tortured as he refused to give up any Intel on the blackops project he'd been assigned to, biding his time until his captors slipped up and he was able to use the same knife that scarred him to cut himself free.

His favorite might be that one crazy, alcohol-fueled night in Tijuana, with the bar crawl where he outlasted all his buddies and hit it off with a smoking blonde in a barely there red dress. How was he supposed to know that she had a girlfriend in the marines who got touchy about anyone dancing with her girl?

Only Clay, and Jensen (the stubborn little fuck), know the truth. Only they know that it was the parting gift of a drunken father, who smashed a beer bottle over his head and tried to blind him with the jagged glass when he stopped the bastard from beating his drug addict mother. That story's too pathetic, too shameful, too _real_ to be told.

He's supposed to be the charmingly psychopathic soldier who likes the killing just a little too much, not the angry boy from a broken home who _burnsburnsburns_ with the desperate need for violence to silence the demons in his head and the mirrors that refuse to lie.

So he spins his stories, he fights and wins dozens of imaginary battles against dozens of imaginary enemies until he can barely keep track of what he told who, and can almost trick himself into believing his own lies.

Sometimes it's nice to believe that he's the hero.


	3. Loquacious

**A/N: **So Cougar was a sneaky, elusive bastard, and took until last night to start talking, but then he somehow ended up being longer than Jensen's (which I'm posting now)**. **Crazy boys...anyways, the only one I have left to write is Pooch's, who has been wonderfully patient while the others chattered (or well, in Cougar's case, stared silently and expressively), so I should have these all up by Tuesday/Wednesday, and then it'll be on to the other Losers stories whispering away in my head. :D

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><p><em><strong>Loquacious<strong>_

His sister Jacqueline – "Call me Jackie," – loves to say that he was born talking and hasn't stopped since. It's not quite accurate, silence is a necessary skill in a house with a father who has a hair trigger temper and a fondness for studded leather belts, but it's close enough. Contrary to popular belief, he does know when to shut up though, and most of the time his endless flow of words is more than just the product of an overactive imagination and enough curiosity to kill nine cats nine times over.

Talking can make his father forget why he's angry, can make Jackie laugh even while scrubbing the blood off the floor, and will always be infinitely better than crying. It can make the bullies who don't like the fact that he never pays attention and never gets less than an A hesitate until he can get away, or at least let him insult their intelligence and questionable hygiene a few times before they knock the glasses off his face. It can make teachers forget why they asked about his black eye, or the fact that he's never actually explained why his father never shows up to the parent-teacher conferences.

It never seems to make them stop harping on his need for focus though, or make them stop trying to get him to care about the dreams he's supposed to have.

So he's a genius, with boundless potential and a million bright futures, blah blah blah. He's also easily bored, full of enough energy to power a V8 engine, has a tongue that won't stop, and a burning desire to go _anywhere_ that isn't a small crappy room in a small crappy town surrounded the same crappy people every day. Who needs an education for that when he can make a computer do almost anything?

Then his sister, his beautiful, brilliant sister who'd finally gotten away, safely working her way through college, gets knocked up by a man whose only difference from their father is that when he drinks, he gets unfaithful tendencies instead of violent ones, and everything changes again.

It's no longer enough for him to get out, to go a dozen different somewheres and make just enough to get by while seeing the world. Jackie needs him, his future niece or nephew needs him, and he'll be damned if he lets the only family that's ever mattered down. He enlists in the army the day after graduation.

The growth spurt he finally hit in his junior year serves him well and he breezes through the physical parts of basic training with nearly as much ease as the technical, somehow winding up with extra training after extra training until the white trash geek from bumfuck nowhere is suddenly in Special Forces. In fact, pretty much the only thing he struggles with is discipline, not because he doesn't know how to follow orders, but because after walking out of his father's house for the last time, he refuses to kowtow to stupid, ignorant orders ever again, an attitude that does not make him popular with the majority of the brass.

The combination of multiple disciplinary infractions and his undeniable skill as a hacker finally lands him with the Losers, and for the first time in his life, he finally feels like he fits in with this group of unwanted misfits who always get the job done.

It takes a while for all of them but Pooch, who joined the unit when he did and can get along with anybody, to get used to him. Clay seems mostly amused by his constant stream of random and frequently inappropriate babble, and lets him get away with a certain amount of mad schemes and smart talk as long as he stays focused when needed. Roque looks like he wants to kill him for the first six months, then the other man ends up getting a good look at the scars on his back and suddenly they have a silent understanding, a mutual respect for two fucked up children who deal with the pain in different ways.

It's almost a year before he realizes that Cougar actually likes him as part of the team, and isn't just tolerating his presence. They're stuck in the middle of the desert with no supplies and no backup when the sniper risks his own neck to save Jensen's from a group of insurgents, and then swears sibilantly in Spanish as he uses his own shirt to cobble together bandages that manage to keep him alive until they can get him to a hospital, not leaving his side until they're wheeling him into surgery.

Somehow, in giving up the few vague ideas he did have on what he wanted to do with his life, he found something better than any of the dreams of ivy leagues and silicon towers that his teachers tried to sell him on. Jackie and precocious little Beth make him smile with every e-mail and letter and video conference and visit home, and the Losers become the family he never believed existed – annoying, complicated, and anything but perfect, but _there_ in every way that matters.

Now he talks to hear Pooch's snarky response, or to see how long it takes before Roque threatens him with one of his knives, or to get that one _look_ from Clay, or, his favorite goal, to earn one of Cougar's elusive smiles. He talks to make Beth laugh and to hear Jackie say his full name with affectionate exasperation.

He talks because he's happy and because life is good and because talking? Is fucking awesome and that's all there is to it.


	4. Uniform

_**Uniform**_

His dad is a janitor and his mom is a clerk and he sits on the front steps of his school, waiting for the bus, and watches the executives across the street go in and out of the gleaming glass fronted buildings and _dreams_. He wants to be one of those men who exudes success and confidence, who wears a suit every day and who isn't content to sit on a second hand couch in a rented duplex and watch mindless sitcoms while his wife makes dinner and his son tries not to hate him for never doing anything with his life.

He's smart, but only enough to pull B's, not A's, so scholarships are unlikely, and being a white male with un-ambitious parents doesn't get you much attention from those offering financial aid. It does get you the attention of every military recruiter in the city though, and he eventually signs up for a four year commitment with the army, fully intending it to be a stepping stone on the way to the education that will get him the life, and the suit, of one of those men he's always wanted to be.

But then, two years into his commitment, three months into his second tour, he realizes that being a soldier isn't a stepping stone to a better life, it _is_ his life, and he's _good_ at it. He's good at fighting, he's good at killing, he's good at taking a crappy plan and a crappy situation and making it _work_.

The army notices his skill and he's selected for the SFQC, otherwise known as the Special Forces Qualification Course, or more affectionately, hell. A hell in which he thrives.

He successfully completes the Q course, with only a few black marks on his record in regards to his 'attitude', and takes as many advanced skills courses as he can between deployments. It's not the suit he always pictured, but the pride he takes in his uniform and his beret is more real than those pipe dreams ever were, and while he's beginning to wonder if a wife and son will ever be a part of the picture, he no longer doubts that he's going to make something of himself.

He's one of the best of the best, eventually landing in charge of his own team, an unlikely band of equally talented men with even worse luck when it comes to pissing off the chain of command. The missions get deadlier, their reputations grow (in good and bad ways depending on who you ask) and the first time he hears the nickname 'Losers' for his squad, he laughs, and considers adding it to the uniform.

He was born a loser, they all were. The deck was stacked against them from the get-go and all five of them managed to make names for themselves anyways, using their innate talents, a certain disregard for authority, and the pigheaded stubbornness they all share. They're good at what they do and they love to do it and that's more than any executive in a shiny glass tower can say. So yes, they're Losers, and damn proud of it.

He does eventually get that suit though, minus the tie he never really liked the look of, and it never fails to attract the kind of volatile women his team dreads and he finds so irresistible.


	5. Acabelo

**A/N:** Ah Cougar...so, this did not go how I expected really, but this is the story he told me, so I hope you enjoy!

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><p><em><strong>Acábelo<strong>_

Carlos Alvarez grows up as the middle child of a large, loud, warm family in Artesia, New Mexico. He has two older sisters, two younger sisters, three aunts, his mother, and his father, who deals with the sea of femininity by owning a local bar that all of the officers who work or train at the local site for the FLETC like to frequent.

Carlos loves his family, fiercely and intensely, but he doesn't quite fit into their happy boisterousness. He's quiet, unnaturally so his mami says with fond worry, and prefers watching the hustle and bustle from a discreet distance, frequently from a high perch like the stairs, or a tree, or the roof (usually until one of his relatives sees him and yells "Baja de allí, papito! Quieres que tu madre se muera de miedo?")

He learns to fade into the background, so that his silent watching doesn't make people uncomfortable, and his eldest sister, Bianca, likes to tease him by saying "You're like a puma, a cougar, just waiting for the perfect moment to pounce."

When he is twelve, he begins working in his father's bar – clearing tables, doing dishes, and running errands. The officers find his silent politeness amusing, and after a few times hearing Bianca or Louisa (his other older sister) call him Cougar instead of Carlos while serving drinks, they start to call him that too – "Little Cougar Alvarez, quiet like a cat."

At fifteen, he finds unexpected fame on the high school football team, which he only tried out for because he knows his parents want all of their children to go to college, and cannot afford to help support any of them after Bianca. Despite their mascot being the bulldog, the name Cougar sticks, and the quiet boy who just likes to watch people finds himself unable to pass through the halls between classes without having his back slapped by a teammate, or his hand claimed by a flirtatious cheerleader.

Marisol, who is just eleven months younger than him and his sparkling, talkative, contagiously exuberant opposite, joins the squad to support him, and he learns to turn his observant stares into intent glares as his teammates do their best to make her feel 'welcome'.

He's scouted at the state championship his junior year, and is offered a partial ride at UNM his senior year. He has no idea what he wants to do with his life, playing football is a means not an end – despite his skill he finds no particular joy in it – and all he really wants is to stay close to the family who want so badly for him to succeed.

In the end, none of their plans matter. Two months before graduation, boys from a rival school are in town for a game and catch Marisol, alone, behind the bleachers. She's not interested, they don't take no for an answer, and his beautiful, amazing, always smiling sister, winds up in the hospital with cracked ribs, a broken arm, and a face so black and blue he can't recognize her any longer.

The hospital is loud, too loud, all of his relatives, half the town's law enforcement, and a sea of well wishers – his family, especially Marisol, is well liked by all – and he has an unfamiliar emotion inside of him burning to get out. He steps outside, trying to breathe, and ends up walking the streets in a desperate attempt to find peace. Instead he finds the remaining two boys of the five that attacked his sister, hiding from the cops, and he sees red.

Twenty minutes later, he's being pulled off of their prone bodies, hands aching and covered in blood, and he doesn't know if they're alive. He knows he doesn't care.

The boys survive, but their injuries are severe enough that they end up in the same hospital as his sister, a bitter irony that makes him want to slip into their rooms and finish the job. Their parents want him arrested, his are desperate not to watch another child suffer, and the law in their town is caught in the middle, despite their clear favoring of the Alvarez family. Carlos spends the rest of that night at his sister's bedside, watching her breathe through a tube, and comes up with a new plan.

The police officer assigned to watch him – they refuse to put him in jail, despite the fact that he's eighteen and the boys he attacked weren't – takes him to the army recruiting office the next morning, and he leaves for basic training without ever getting his diploma.

He's extremely physically fit, and he easily progresses through BCT, attracting the positive attention of his superior officers, while trying to get a handle on the seemingly endless rage that still hasn't burned itself out. He's quieter than he's ever been, speaking only when spoken to, and only when required to at that, not taking part in the friendly ribbing of the nicer recruits, and carefully ignoring the crueler taunts of the born bullies – knowing that if he loses his temper so violently again, he doesn't have any place left to go.

He's disciplined to the point of obsession, never breaks a rule, and turns out to be a crack shot. His drill sergeant recommends him for advanced weaponry training, and the first time he looks down a sniper scope, he knows he's found something he can excel at _and_ enjoy in a way he never enjoyed football or school.

Being a sniper is all about focus and control and patience, quiet observation of a target that can last for hours, or even days. It puts distance between he and his targets, preventing it from becoming personal enough to unleash that inner core of anger that's never gone away, just been caged. But, it also makes him see their faces, makes him watch them die as if he was standing right in front of them, so that he never has the option of denying accountability for his actions.

He does excel, and after just one tour of duty (and a visit back home to see Marisol, who's physically healed and stubborn enough that she's well on her way to being emotionally healed as well, and is oh so proud of her brother, for what he did, and what he's doing) he's fast tracked to the SFQC on the recommendation of several superior officers.

The training is grueling – physically, mentally, and emotionally demanding – and it finishes the purification process that the army began, honing him into a deadly weapon that never misses its mark. He's no longer afraid of what he might do if he loses control, because control is now as much a part of him as his family is, an intrinsic part of his being that he doesn't have to think about it, it just is.

So he doesn't lose control when his commanding officer orders him to abandon two fellow soldiers and seven civilians in the middle of a war zone. Instead he calmly crushes his comm. under his boot heel and goes after them, returning with both soldiers and six of the civilians alive. His commanding officer wants him gone, but at the end of the day, he's more valuable than the Colonel is, and instead he's shunted to a different Colonel's new unit – one Franklin Clay.

Six years and two new teammates later, and he doesn't have to make the hard choice when an unthinkable order comes down; the Losers, also an intrinsic part of his being, are all the same kind of men he is, valuing justice and honor over arbitrary rules and the chain of command. They go in and they get the kids out and he's pretty sure that this time, they'll all be getting a Big Chicken Dinner instead of a slap on the wrist, but there's no question that it's worth it.

Then fire rains down from the sky, twenty-five innocent lives lost, and just like that he's eighteen-years-old again, seeing red as righteous fury burns him alive from the inside out.

This time, he _will_ finish the job.

x

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><p><strong>AN: **English translation: the title means Finish it, the sentence means 'Come down from there! You want your mother to die of fright?'

Also, FLETC stands for Federal Law Enforcement Training Center and yes there is one in Artesia. BCT is Basic Combat Training, the first half of Basic Training before you go on to Advanced Individual Training in various specialties, SFQC as mentioned in Clay's vignette is the Special Forces Qualification Course, and a Big Chicken Dinner is a Bad Conduct Discharge.


	6. Family Man

**A/N:** Well, that took forever, and I'm so sorry, and it totally wasn't Pooch's fault. This past week was the first week of fall semester and between work and classes I was pulling 12-13 hour days without more than a ten minute breather and had no energy to write. But! I finally finished, and Pooch was very patient with me, and now this piece is complete and I can get started on the sequel which will be more focused on the events during/post movie. Thank you for the feedback and the hits and I hope you all enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it!

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><p><em><strong>Family Man<strong>_

Linwood Porteus is a happy go lucky child who just loves to take things apart and – most of the time – can figure out how to put them back together again, frequently with 'improvements' that make his barely above poverty level mother simultaneously frustrated and proud that her baby boy is so clever. Linwood's mother was never married to Linwood's father, doesn't even know his name, and even in the crappy, crime ridden neighborhood of Philly he grows up in, that makes him a target of ridicule – a bastard, the son of a bitch, a worthless mutt.

But Linwood, with his too big name and easy grin, doesn't get mad, he just takes the insults apart like he did his mom's toaster and puts them back together into his new identity as The Pooch. The Pooch who can make your ten speed move like a mountain bike, who found a broken gameboy in the gutter and made it work again, who took the mousetrap car assignment in eighth grade and turned it into a high speed demolition derby that got him an A+ and detention for the rest of the year.

Pooch's mother gets sick when he's sixteen, and no amount of tinkering with the neighborhood electronics or helping at the local garage for a few extra bucks can pay for the treatments she needs. He's allowed himself to dream of studying engineering at some fancy school and designing planes or spaceships or something, but his grades aren't quite enough and his mom needs help _now_, so he signs his soul away to the army before he even graduates, leaving for basic a week after he walks across the stage for his diploma, his mother too weak to come to the ceremony.

They still let him play with machines in the army, in fact he has a lot of new toys to play with, and it turns out he can drive or fly or steer anything just as easy as he can take it apart and make it better. All of his pay goes towards his mom's treatment and she gets better too, coming to live on base for cheaper medical care, which leads to him meeting the lovely, scary as hell, Jolene Broward, member of the Army Nurse Corps.

She's fierce, crazy smart, stubborn and his mom loves her. He knows he wants to marry her after three days, and she's not impressed, refusing to go out with him for a full year, only giving in after he agrees to give the entire medical staff free mechanic services whenever he's on base.

Two years into the relationship that's become the best thing in his life, a year after he re-ups when offered special forces training and a chance to play with bigger and better toys, and two days into his first tour after said training, he's given an order that even The Pooch can't stomach with an easy grin.

He's a driver for his team, but he's a fully trained operative and when a mission goes south, his duties tend to multiply. On this one, he's tasked with retrieving the objective after half his team gets pinned down at one end of the guerilla leader's compound. It turns out to be the leader's child, a little girl with big blue eyes and black curly hair who stares at him in silent terror as he bursts into the room and guns down her guards before catching sight of her, huddled in the corner with tears rolling down her cheeks.

He didn't sign up to be a kidnapper or a hostage taker and when a crying woman runs into the room through a side door and throws herself between him and the child, he backs away and decides to pretend he never made it through. They all get out alive, but the brass isn't impressed by his edited version of events and he's shunted to another team, with a decidedly mixed reputation.

The Losers are the best of the best, routinely go on missions that no one will admit exists, and make the word unconventional seem conventional by comparison. They're also a bit lacking in sanity, even their other newest member Jensen (who was built without an off switch), and sometimes Pooch wonders when _he_ became the voice of reason.

They're a team though, on or off mission, and they're there for each other through thick and thin. All four of them come to his mom's funeral, even Roque, who looks both dapper and mildly terrifying in a suit, and all four stand with him at his wedding to Jolene, whom the men, even Jensen, treat with more deference than their own commanding officer. He listens to stories about Jensen's apparently crazily precocious niece, and deals with the occasionally lethal dramatics of Clay's various relationships. He learns how to handle Roque's moods, and violent nightmares, and not to comment when Cougar receives novel-length letters from each member of his apparently gigantic and purely female family.

They're the first people he tells when Jolene tells him she's pregnant, and Roque only threatens to stab him once when he can't stop crowing for two straight weeks. Then comes Bolivia, and another mission involving children, only this time his whole team won't stand for that shit and they go in to save the day. Except the day is apparently unsaveable and it all goes to hell in a hand basket and not only do they not save the kids, but now he's officially dead, and may not ever see his own kid.

The months without Jolene are intensely frustrating and crawl by with painful slowness, in sharp contrast to the weeks after Aisha shows up, which are a fast paced blaze of action and plan changes and betrayal. Waiting for his legs to heal and slowly making their way across the country while avoiding Max's goons and keeping his attention on them and not their families tests his patience in new and torturous ways.

But it's all worth it when he walks into that hospital room and sees the myriad of emotions in his wife's eyes, when he gets to touch her again, gets to hold her hands while she does her level best to break his fingers, and hears his son's first cry.

Pooch isn't one to get angry or hold grudges, he's the level headed member their band of outcasts, but holding his son in his arms, seeing the relief and love and carefully concealed fear in his wife's eyes, he feels hate solidify inside of him. Max tried to take this away, will keep trying to take this away, unless _they_ stop him. So it's time to use that problem solving brain of his and figure out how to take Max apart, piece by piece, until not even Pooch could put him back together again.


End file.
